Features

The fall of Tony O'Reilly

The Irish rugby and business star has been brought down by his debts

Tony O’Reilly’s investments in Waterford Wedgwood and in newspapers have left him on his last legs

Arm draped over the back of his chair, tanned and dapper in a pinstripe suit,
Sir Tony O’Reilly regaled his interviewer with a story from his first rugby
tour as a 19-year-old prodigy with the British and Irish Lions to South
Africa in 1955.

“An old Welsh player at the end of the tour told me, ‘You got 10 tries in the
first six games, and six tries in the last 10 games. The gaps get smaller as
your name gets bigger.’ I suddenly realised that in senior [rugby] I was
lumbered with a reputation.”

It was deserved. The try haul was a record for a Lions tour, until it was
broken four years later in Australia and New Zealand — by O’Reilly.

By the time of that interview, in 1974, O’Reilly’s reputation stretched far
beyond rugby. At the age of 38 he was arguably Ireland’s most famous
businessman, a millionaire